Thread

SpaceX's Starship launching to orbit for first time ever today

304 points · 367 comments · geox

Zigurd · 1790601391 · focus · HN ↗
Having an impossible critical path will be the demise of the starship project. Too many things have to work that cannot be tested out of order. Too many of those things that needed to work years ago still don't. And those are the easy ones.
The items I'm listing here are just a subset of the critical path, and each milestone along the way will take months, optimistically, and years more realistically. To the point that starship won't be relevant to moon missions or any commercial use by the time it does what it needs to do to even partially fulfill the plans for it:
It needs to meet payload specifications. Currently it is off by a factor of two, which sounds doable until you realize the spec is 100 tons, and they need to find 50 tons more capacity by shedding weight elsewhere in the system.
It needs a launch cadence fast enough so that refueling doesn't take 15 separate starship tankers. Currently it would take years to refuel one single starship to make a one-way trip to the moon.
There's just a minor milestone on the way to that launch cadence: catching both stages.
Once both stages are reliably caught after a mission, refurbishment needs to be minimal. Proving that out will take several missions.
This is a simplified list of items on the critical path, but reaching each of these items has risks, and if those risks prove to be problems to solve, then each of those problems has a list of tasks and tests associated with it.
Some people think very highly of Elon for proposing technologically elegant solutions. But he's got a really big blind spot for the project management implications.
1. NitpickLawyer · 1790603202 · focus · HN ↗
  I'm saddened by this comment being upvoted a lot on this site. I'm a space nerd from EU and have been watching SpX since they were launching from an atol. This comment is the epitome of clueless negativity, wrapped in an umbrella of big words and a list of things that are neither important nor factually correct.
  Nothing listed in this comment is going to lead to "the demise of the starship project". And nothing listed there is original. We've heard it time and time again, when F9 was ready to launch, when F9 was ready to land, when F9 did land (bbbut they have to do it constantly), when F9 managed the first re-use (they need to do it at least 10 times so it's worth it) and so on and so forth.
  They've now launched AND landed >600 times already. Let's just say they know what they're doing.
  Anyway, for a bit of context: the current first orbital flight, with 26 satellites deploying right now, is adding the same amount of Starlink bandwidth as 10+ F9 launches. Let that sink in and re-do whatever cost/opportunity and "management" spiels you need to do. One flight > 10x F9 flights.
  That alone justifies the Starship. The rest is the cherry on top.
  1. Zigurd · 1790604515 · focus · HN ↗
    "That alone justifies..."
    ...keeping whatever project that should've been put to sleep months ago alive. Most people reading this have been on a software development project that fits this pattern of ignoring massively missed milestones and hoping to catch up. That's often accompanied by isolated economic arguments that are fragments of what started out as a coherent business case that can no longer be supported.
    tim333 · 1790608191 · focus · HN ↗
    >should've been put to sleep months ago
    The thing works and is launching satellites? And if they just continue as is it'll be the lowest cost per Kg to space?
    Seems quite successful even if the moon landing doesn't happen.

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